When you have a phone with 28 characters (including a comma), an abbreviated nickname is important. My favorite smartphone nickname at the moment is for the Motorola Photon, lovingly called the MoPho. I'm just going to call Samsung's 4.52" superphone the ET.
I've had this phone for a few days now, and it is an improvement from the Evo 4G in every way and by every measure. Some areas are minor improvements, but for the most part, the ET wins every comparison with extreme prejudice.
Here are my top six favorite things about the ET:
1) The screen is indeed awesome. On paper, the WVGA resolution may seem inadequate for the 4.52" SAMOLED Plus screen. But in person, the screen is luscious, like a mini plasma TV albeit the one in the showroom that needs a few tweaks to saturation and contrast (it's too bad you can't do ISF calibration on it). Still, LCD screens look washed out and weak in comparison to the SAMOLED Plus screen. Text is clear and very sharp, with a clarity that belies its 800 X 480 resolution. There is some sort of anti-oleic coating that resists fingerprints and smudging -- my Evo was caked with smudges and oil in short order and I would clean it off with my shirt frequently. I haven't felt compelled to wipe the ET screen clean since I got it.
2) Web browsing is a desktop-like experience. Web pages are rendered so quickly that it feels more like a desktop and less like a phone. Scrolling is butter smooth -- coming from the Evo, it felt slippery at first. I have now become accustomed to the zero lag and instant reaction. Text reflow is amazing on the ET -- it happens instantaneously. On the Evo, the text reflow would get bogged down as the page rendered and it frequently would not reflow until the page fully loaded. On the ET, the text will reflow even if the page is only partially loaded. And this is the best mobile Flash experience I've used. HD videos on Vimeo and Dailymotion play flawlessly. Videos on EPSN and CNN load quickly and play without a hitch. As has been shown, the problem with Flash video isn't Flash itself, but rather poorly coded pages that require too much in the way of resources to render. With the 1.2 GHz dual-core chip and 1GB RAM at its disposal, the ET cuts through these problems with sheer muscle.
3) Call quality is a huge leap from the Evo. I really had no idea how poor my call quality was on the Evo. It's like night and day.
4) 4G is actually usable. The Evo took a long time to connect to 4G, but between the battery hit and the fact that the phone would slow to a crawl when it was connected meant that 4G was a situational option, only for downloading large files if I had the coverage (music playback would skip if the 4G was on, and web pages would lock up and stutter). Now I can turn on 4G and actually use the rest of my phone normally. And because of ET's 4G sleep feature, it doesn't use nearly as much power -- on the Evo, it wasted a lot of energy trying to latch on to a signal and wouldn't stop until the battery died. On the ET, if the data is not being used, 4G goes into sleep mode. And it's much stronger on the 4G, allowing me to access 4G in places where the Evo failed to connect. The one quibble I have is that you have to turn off wifi manually to turn on 4G.
5) Very thin, light, and sleek. It's a big phone, no doubt, but only a skosh larger than the Evo 4G in area and negligibly larger than the new 4.3" phones like the Evo 3D and Photon. But it's thinner and much lighter than any of them, and I'll take that trade off. The ET doesn't feel any larger in my hand than the Evo.
6) Software is smooth, responsive and VERY fast. Everything software wise is faster and snappier on the ET than the Evo. Download speeds are lightning quick, and installing apps takes a third of the time. There's a glassy smooth responsiveness to finger gestures that blows away the Evo -- before I got used to it, it felt loose and too fast. But I realize that I was used to the millisecond pauses and delays when scrolling or flicking that are now non-existent on the ET.
I haven't used the camera much so I can't personally comment on it, but from all reports, the ET has a top of the line smartphone camera that records in 1080p and has still image quality that rivals the iPhone 4. It also has a double-detent shutter button, which allows you to touch and hold to auto-focus and set exposure, and then takes the picture when you lift your finger off. It's the touch screen equivalent to a two step shutter.
Battery is better, but maybe 30% better. It's still not going to last me a full day without bump charging, but I have a feeling that Exchange Active Sync is the big difference here since most people are reporting 12-20 hours on a full charge. I'm getting around 9 hours before the battery hitting zero, but the Evo maxed out at 6 and sometimes died at 4, so while it's not the battery life I've dreamed of, it's still a lot better.
One thing the Evo does do better is handling weak 3G signals. I can't do real testing since my Evo is deactivated now, but I could get a slow 3G connection in my bedroom with the Evo that was good enough for pokey web browsing. The ET is so slow that web pages take forever to load and is practically unusable. Fortunately for me, I am usually in the range of wifi or 4G, but this is a potential deal breaking issue for some (although if your 3G signal is that bad, you might want to move to another carrier). In October, Sprint will start converting their 800 MHz band currently used for Nextel PTT into a high speed data band which will alleviate this issue. If the 3G data issue is scaring you away from this phone, check back again in a couple of months. It's also possible that the Evo simply had a better 3G antenna rather than the ET having a subpar one.
If you have an upgrade coming your way, I would say that the ET is definitely worth the $200 equipment upgrade. However, I could not definitively say that it would be worth the $700 to purchase it off contract. For those who look for the latest and greatest, the ET delivers. But the Evo can do pretty much whatever the ET does, albeit slower and clunkier. For instance, I can check an email in less than half the time because it moves through the screens so much quicker. But the OS is the same. The functionality is the same. And if you're not pushing the boundaries of your phone in the first place, it's not going to change your life.
And that's one takeaway with the ET -- it's a big refinement over the Evo 4G, but I would be hard pressed to say the ET is a revolutionary step. I remember moving from the Touch Pro 2 running WinMo to the Evo and with every feature I used, I heard the Hallelujah Chorus in the background. It was like the scales fell from my eyes. The ET is a slam dunk upgrade for me, but then again, many of the things I do with my phones are incomprehensible to most users.
I came to a realization the other day that as long as I know why something isn't working correctly (and can therefore fix it or avoid the steps that cause it), it's simply an annoyance. But for those who don't appreciate the granularity of the Android OS like I do, it simply "doesn't work". The ET is on the cusp of being the kind of phone that can, through sheer horsepower, create a user experience that rivals that of iOS. It's not there yet -- refinements to Android need to be made, but the developers have to balance the iOS aesthetic of only allowing you to see the tip of the iceberg with the Android culture that wants to explore the 90% underneath the water. I know that this will sound like the whole, "Linux is almost there" story to some, but Android has a huge advantage over Linux because it's already out there and being used by the masses. Being "there" is an achievable goal whereas with Linux it's a faraway first step. I think too, that while I dislike iOS, the fact is that you cannot have a terrible experience with it. But with the wrong device (say, the Moment or any one of the el cheapo Verizon models), you can have the kind of awful experience with Android that would leave such a bad taste in your mouth you wouldn't go back even if they paid you. But the ET is on the precipice of being the kind of Android phone that couldn't leave a bad taste in your mouth because it's that good. And if you already like Android? It's the best phone ever.
It's the king of the hill.
Edited by Hanson - 9/21/11 at 2:07pm
